A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter A

Aff

Dialect
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Off; the Scots word for "off," common in dialect speech and poetry.

Detailed Definition
"Aff" is the Scots form of "off," used across a wide range of registers from flyting to lyric verse. Its clipped, abrupt sound suits the directness of Scots poetic diction, and it appears in Burns, MacDiarmid, and countless folk songs. The word's brevity gives it percussive energy in a line, and its frequency in everyday Scots speech makes it an essential marker of authentic vernacular voice in Scottish poetry.
Example
Example in poetry:
"Aff" means "off" and Burns writes "He'll stamp an' jump, an' gie a squeal, / An' rin aff skelpin' owre the field." showing sudden departure; A poet might write: "She flung her shawl aff in the rain, / and never looked back doun the lane." to suggest defiance; "The lid flew aff the boiling pot, / and steam rose in the mirky slot." for physical action; "Aff wi' the past, the dreich and drear, / a new daw breaks, the skies are clear." uses the word as an imperative of release; "He shook the mud aff baith his boots, / before he crossed the old hearthroots." grounds a character in rural reality
Additional Notes
Aff appears constantly in Scots verse as both preposition and adverb, and its brevity makes it metrically useful — a single syllable where English might require one or two. Burns, Fergusson, and later MacDiarmid all deploy it naturally. It combines readily with other Scots words: "aff-hand" (offhand), "aff-luif" (extempore), and in compound phrases like "weel aff" (well off). Students should note that "aff" can indicate removal, distance, or departure, giving it emotional as well as directional range. Its bluntness suits the directness often celebrated in Scots poetic tradition.
Also Known As
Off Away
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